I've known about THE PRINCIPALITY OF SEALAND for many years, but had forgotten about it until I stumbled across a mention of it in this article on The World's Most Mysterious Buildings and went and looked at the wiki page on Sealand and then remembered it's interesting history.
There's not much to old Sealand, is there? It looks like a trailer and a crane atop a platform mounted on two stanchions. Home is where the heart is, as they say.
The old World War two sea fort is located about 7 miles off the coast of England, in the North Sea. The above picture, from wiki, was taken after a fire a few years ago. I note that the wiki on Sealand indicates that the founder and former Prince of Sealand, Paddy Roy Bates died in October of 2012 while living in a care home on the UK mainland.
His son, Prince Regent Michael, carries on for his father. The wiki page also notes that online gambling from Sealand is supposed to hit the internet if it has not already, and that this past year Sealand has sported a team (that lives elsewhere, as apparently so do the residents of Sealand) to represent Sealand in the sport of flat track Roller Derby.
Still, a very cool use of an old World War II fort. Who knows, the family that owns the place might well have the last laugh on lots of folks one day.
If you're interested, there are other war forts in that area that are unoccupied, although I don't know if the UK has taken any steps to prevent what in America might be termed "squatting" on the remainder of these ocean strongholds. And Sealand was for sale for a princely sum over the past few years.
Me, I'm thinking it probably gets mighty windy and cold being there in the North Sea, and the picture above of Sealand shows what must be uncharacteristically calm waters in the North Sea. Every time I can recall seeing a North Sea film, video or picture, huge waves were crashing and it was looking stormy. I wonder what kind of high winds they get there and how tall of waves emerge from the no doubt huge storms that must at times hit Sealand.
One big ommission from the Mysterious Buildings photo article was the long abandoned Linda Vista Hospital in L.A. I've had friends who ventured in that building, and quite a cast of characters has been known to dwell there since it closed several decades ago. Here's some more links to Linda Vista that contains links to other weird and creepy buildings.
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